Chapter XXXIII: A Retrospect and a Moral (4)

The brilliant young financier ... believes in life insurance
for the people. It creates the valuable habit of saving. He
deprecates the malicious attacks on companies by men of
mysterious motives, and feels it will be a sorry day if they
ever become objects of prey for political thieves.

The banker paid his respects to Thomas W. Lawson, of Boston,
whom he characterized as a notoriety seeker and branded as a
"discredited, disreputable, despised stock-jobber who
glories in his infamy." Mr. Eckels lashed Lawson with
caustic language, and stated the American people of judgment
are not misled by his diatribes.

Mr. Eckels believes that life-insurance presidents reach
their high stations by their own ability and grasping of
opportunities. Because a man is elevated to a position of
eminence and responsibility does not mean he is dishonest.
He arrives there because he cannot be held down and remains
as long as he proves his worth. The banker declared that
life companies, with their vast funds, were being safely
guided by men of superior mental mould.

Mr. Eckels referred to President McCall, of the New York
Life, as being a clerk in a State bureau office when he
first made his acquaintance. He said President McCall had
advanced, like other company executives, owing to his own
ability and genius for management.

In an early article in this series I stated that one of the favorite operations of the "System" is to pick off those officials who have exhibited unusual talent or energy in protecting the interests of the National Government. In this way they secure the services of men who know the secret workings of the people's institutions and how best to guard the corporations against the consequences of their misdeeds. During the Cleveland administration there developed a "financial phenomenon," James H. Eckels, Comptroller of the Currency. It did not take long for the astute Rogers-Morgan-McCall clique to see that this young man's knowledge of finance in connection with his governmental position might prove a dangerous obstacle to their machine if he were not captured. It was not long before he was captured.

I met Mr. Eckels during the Cleveland bond performance. I need not enter into the details of that extraordinary affair here, for it is one of the sore spots in recent American history. Briefly, the Administration at Washington attempted to issue $100,000,000 government bonds and deliver them in a snap sale to the "System." The New York _World_ began a crusade against the transaction, and was so successful that the Administration was compelled to offer the issue to the public through competitive bids. The result--the bonds fetched many more millions for the Government than if the deal had been allowed to slip along the ways the "System" had greased for it. I remember well the scene at the opening of the bids. It was in the United States Treasury at Washington. With many others who desired an allotment of the bonds, I was present. We were crowded into a small room, and following the direction of young Mr. Eckels, who handled the transaction, we gave him our bids, which, according to the advertised programme, were in sealed envelopes. After all the bids were submitted--mine was for a number of millions--the envelopes were taken by Mr. Eckels into a rear room. Then a few of the leading financiers present, among them John A. McCall, of the New York Life, J. Pierpont Morgan, and one or two others of the "System's" foremost representatives, got their heads together and began an earnest conference. Certain of them went out of the room and after awhile returned for a further conference. There were several such confabulations and comings and goings, until finally, after a monotonous delay, the bids were opened and the bonds awarded. Morgan, McCall, _et al._, had secured the bulk of the issue at a price many points above what any one had been led to believe the bonds would sell for, and many points higher than the "System" and the Government had proclaimed to the people they could possibly sell for, yet at a price which showed millions of profit a few hours after the bids were opened. I do not charge that the public's envelopes were opened and "peeked" into before the "System's" bids were sealed. Such a charge is not necessary. It has been made many times by the press. Mr. Eckels, to the minds of such of us as could see through cracks in a floor wide enough to drive a four-in-hand coach into without unhooking the leaders, had lived up to his role as a financial phenomenon, and when some time afterward it was bruited abroad that this able young man was to have the presidency of the City Bank, or any other large bank belonging to the "System" that he might select, there was no surprise, although much comment, in Wall Street. Mr. Eckels finally accepted the presidency of the Commercial Bank of Chicago, where he now is one of the important cogs in the "System's" machine.

The case of James M. Beck has points of similarity. Mr. Beck, a young Philadelphia lawyer, obtained a valuable knowledge of the secrets of the Department of Justice in Washington as Assistant United States Attorney-General, and in the prosecution of the Northern Securities suit got an insight into the "System's" methods. It will be remembered that at the trial of the suit he made a great appearance and became famous as the young champion of the people who had succeeded in "busting" this notorious trust. The victory was hardly announced before it became known that the brilliant Assistant Attorney-General had renounced the cause of the public and had been engaged at a large salary as chief counsel for Henry H. Rogers, of Standard Oil.

Mr. Beck has proved a most available and flexible servant in the cause of his master. He has done Mr. Rogers's bidding in a manner befitting the best traditions of "Standard Oil." Almost his first work was the trial of the famous Boston Gas suit, in which for weeks he "steered" Henry H. Rogers while on the witness-stand in the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The very night before this case was to be called for trial, the eminent young "trust buster" and people's champion called on my attorney and made him a proposition. It was that I should meet Mr. Beck and agree upon the details of certain testimony that Mr. Rogers and Kidder, Peabody & Co. (the "System's" Boston representatives), and myself would be called upon to give upon the witness-stand next day. My attorney brought the proposition to me.

"Great heavens!" I said, "is it possible that this man has the audacity to come to Boston and ask me to commit perjury?"

"He does not put it in just those words," my attorney answered.

"No, but he says he wishes to _match up_ testimony with me so that we may all testify alike."

"That is it," my attorney answered.

"But," said I, "I have got to state the facts, and the facts are diametrically opposed to the testimony Mr. Rogers and the others are to give. This looks to me like subornation of perjury."

My lawyer would not have it that way, and I instructed him to secure from Mr. Beck a writing as to just what he wished me to do, and that writing I have at the present time. In it he states that if I do not see him and agree upon the testimony to be submitted in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts the following day, there may be developments which will be decidedly uncomfortable for Mr. Rogers and perhaps for the rest of us.

I did not meet Mr. Beck, and Henry H. Rogers and Kidder, Peabody & Co. told one story and I another. Bald perjury was committed by some one. However, I will give all the facts, including the "match up" letter, when I come to them in my story.

Mr. Beck and Mr. Eckels are the two men designated by the "System" to attend public gatherings and vilify Thomas W. Lawson. They are at it, industriously.

THE DONOHOE EPISODE

As soon as the first chapter of "Frenzied Finance" appeared, Henry H. Rogers turned loose on me one Denis Donohoe, a character thug whom he had imported from California for just such emergencies. Donohoe's first service for Mr. Rogers was a vicious onslaught on Heinze, of Montana, in the New York _Commercial_. This was an attack of such unusual vulgarity and malignity that it won Donohoe his spurs, for soon afterward, when by a characteristic trick Mr. Rogers obtained possession of the New York _Commercial_, he made Donohoe its editor. I may mention that Heinze sued the _Commercial_ for $300,000 damages, and apropos of the suit an interesting complication occurred which seriously interfered with Mr. Rogers's plans. The night before the old owners, from whom Mr. Rogers had grabbed the _Commercial_, were to be thrown into the street, they threatened, by way of reprisal for the mean trick that had been served on them, to confess judgment to Heinze. One was president and the other secretary of the company, and this action would have settled the proposition. Rogers, treated to a dose of his own medicine, had to make a compromise, and the men are still on the paper. The details of this good story are to be found in the Detroit _Journal_. It was fitting that when I began my exposures of the "System" this thug should be ordered to do his worst by me, and he began the series of virulent assaults that the _Commercial_ published and advertised all over the country. The first of these was devoted to proving me crazy, and it was carefully circulated by my friends the insurance companies by way of offsetting the effects of my revelations of their jugglery of the people's funds. Later I showed up the fellow so vigorously that John D. Rockefeller ordered Mr. Rogers to muzzle him in his own paper, whereupon arrangements were made with a New York weekly to act as the sewer-conduit for the lies and abuse this thug was warranted to turn out.

I should not dream of dealing with this man or his fatuous attacks in a respectable publication save that he has been appointed the "System's" chief defender. It really seems as though the game were too small to take time for its killing, but as these weak and febrile maunderings really represent the "System's" reply to my charges, it may be worth while to show, once and for all, what idiotic lies they put forth and what a silly and ineffective falsifier it is that they have made their champion. I shall take the second article of the series and contrast Donohoe's statements with the actual facts.

Incidents in Mr. Lawson's versatile career which even those
who are not censorious might well deem shameful.

If in my career I have done anything of which I or any honorable man should be ashamed, then I am willing to stand convicted of all that this character thug charges against me--of being a stock-jobber, fakir, liar.

He claims, if the writer understands him aright, that he is
_animated solely_ by a keen regard for the public weal in
performing what he describes as a public duty.

I stated positively in the Foreword of my story, and have reiterated many times since, that in making these revelations I am actuated first and mainly by a desire to benefit the people of this country, not only by informing them how they are being plundered, but how they can in the future guard themselves, and that if it were necessary to accomplish my purpose I would spend every dollar I possess; but mixed with this desire is a hatred of the "System" as deadly as a man can have for anything human. I have also reiterated that at such stage of this revelation as is possible I shall secure from the "System" every dollar I can wring from it to be used in my fight against it, provided always I can get its dollars in legal, fair, and above-board fighting ways--I mean, in the open market.

Mr. Lawson appears before the bar of public opinion as a
volunteer witness for the commonwealth--"state's
evidence"--as the lawyers phrase it--and hence his
reputation, his motives, his character, his every act,
become at once fit subjects for the closest scrutiny and
examination.

Whoever says that in telling my story I am revealing anything which it is not fair or just to tell, or that I have not a perfect right to state, says that which is false. I am confining myself to explaining how the "System" gets its money. I do not touch upon how it spends it. If in an honorable way I could write the things that have come to me confidentially, the "System" might well tremble. I confess that at times I have been tempted to depart from my code--when, for instance, soon after the first Donohoe chapter, a man came to me and showed that he had been offered $5,000 to vouch for the statement--which Denis Donohoe, H. H. Rogers's right-hand man, had printed, and the insurance companies had spread broadcast--that the first ten years of Thomas W. Lawson's business life were spent as an employee of Richard Canfield, the Providence and New York gambler, and afterward as his partner. "Give us an affidavit to that effect and we will pay you $5,000." To this man I said: "I have never in my life been connected with any gambling-place in any way, nor had to do with gambling in any form, and only once in my life have I set eyes on Richard Canfield. He was in the Waldorf Cafe one day when I was passing through. However, if I did know him I should not be ashamed to admit it, for I consider Canfield, from what I have read of him, an angel of purity compared with any one of a score of the 'System's' votaries I could name." The man left me, but soon after returned. He said: "It makes no difference whether what you say is true or not, I can now secure $10,000 for the affidavit." When this kind of fighting is brought to my attention, I am strongly tempted to let down the bars.

He relates, with all the graphic art of a novelist, a
wellnigh incredible story. Chicanery, fraud, blackmail,
bribery of a legislature and of a judge, systematic pillage
of investors and of the American public.

The details I have narrated are facts, and I will prove them to be facts so all may know them.

In delving into Lawson's career--a most unwelcome task--the
writer has detected a continuity of purpose, a fixity of
design, a uniformity of method pervading his every public
act. What he is doing now, _i.e._, exposing somebody or
something, he has repeatedly done on a lesser scale in the
past; not from worthy motives, but for the sole purpose of
illegitimate pecuniary gain.

Yes, throughout my entire life I have pursued with a continuity of purpose that class I am pursuing to-day--the class that has taken from the people their earnings by fraud or trick. If other proof were needed that the men I am after have lost the discretion which made them great in the world, these foolish yarns supply it. It is well known that no man ever gets near to "Standard Oil" in business or socially until their detectives have dissected his career from the cradle up. I spent years in close business relations with these men, so close that, as I will show later, I acted as the agent not only of Rogers and Rockefeller, but of the Amalgamated Company and the City Bank.

He is at present engaged in attacking the "System," as he
calls it, and the banks and the insurance companies and Wall
Street and American finance, by circulars, by
advertisements, and through the stock-market, as in the past
he has repeatedly attacked other corporations and
individuals until he obtained what he was seeking, and in
every recorded instance that thing was unearned dollars.

In the past I have repeatedly attacked individuals and corporations until I obtained what I sought in every case--justice for the defrauded and punishment for those who had cheated them, and in no case dollars or their equivalent.

In the gilded biographies of himself which, from time to
time, Mr. Lawson has caused to be written and published in
newspapers and magazines.

My history is well enough known. I have always lived in the open. It has not been necessary to press-agent myself. A good deal has been printed about me in the newspapers during the last twenty-five years, but if I have ever sought to exploit myself before the public by means of autobiographies or journalistic puffs, and it is so proved by any reputable newspaper, may I be shown up to public scorn.

It was Mr. Stevens who defrayed the expense of a six months'
course at a Boston business college for his protege.

I have never had such a course of six months, nor of any length, nor have I ever been inside a business college.

Mr. Stevens, who was a kindly, philanthropic man, known and
beloved by all his fellow-citizens, died years ago,
therefore he cannot dispute what Lawson tells.

The late Horace H. Stevens died not years ago, but on March 8, 1904.

Old residents of New York will recall that long before the
days of Canfield's gilded palace, and long before the era of
the present district attorney, Mr. Jerome, there was a
gambling-house known to the commercial traveller and
man-about-town as "818 Broadway," and that one of the
backers of the game was William F. Waldron, or "Billy
Waldron," as he was usually called. Waldron retired nearly
thirty years ago from the syndicate that controlled this
house and moved to Providence, where he interested himself
in gambling and what, for lack of a better term, may be
called the cognate industries. One of these latter was a
bucket-shop of the ordinary country town type.

This bucket-shop was confined to the tender mercies of one
"Jo" Lumpkin as manager. Lumpkin failed to make the business
profitable, and Waldron, after attaching $500.00 that
Lumpkin had on deposit in a bank in New York, turned him
out. In his place he installed the present loquacious
reformer of American finance, Thomas W. Lawson, or "Billy"
Lawson as he was then known to the gamblers, race-track
touts, and confidence men who made Providence their
head-quarters.

My readers will agree with me that such weak and feeble rot is beneath any man's attention, for even if what is here charged were true, namely, that a young man of twenty-one had been so employed, it would have no bearing on his work twenty-six years afterward; but as I have decided to take cognizance of this stuff, here are the facts:

What to-day is known as the bucket-shop evil--that is, the speculation in stocks over the counter at offices conducted by brokers outside the pale of the law or the Stock Exchange--did not exist at the period mentioned. This method of conducting speculation, however, had just been invented, and many of the legitimate brokers, Stock-Exchange members, utilized the new form in their ventures. Indeed, the number of brokers and brokerage shops outside the Stock Exchange was as large, if not larger, than that of the regular houses. At the time Donohoe treats of I was doing considerable business for a young man, as will be evidenced by my business card of that period:

+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| THOMAS W. LAWSON & CO., |
| |
| BANKERS AND BROKERS. |
| |
| Dealers in First-class Investment Bonds and Stocks. |
| Offices: Boston, Providence, New York, and Chicago. |
| |
| President of the Lawson Manufacturing Company. |
| President of the McDonald-Lawson Manufacturing Company. |
| Vice-President of the Briggs Printing Machine Company. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

I regularly visited every week my offices in Boston, Providence, and New York. At one time I had a Providence office in the building marked in the cut in the Donohoe story, and the sign over the door was "Thomas W. Lawson & Co."

It was in Providence, during the heyday of the
Waldron-Lawson enterprise, that Lawson ... first met "Jack"
Roach, whose apparent employment now is selling diamonds on
commission to the so-called "sporting element" of New York,
but who is acknowledged to be Lawson's personal
representative in this city. It was there, too, that he made
the acquaintance of Herbert Gray, who subsequently conducted
a gambling-house in Boston, and who recently served as one
of Lawson's captains and managed his trotting stable. Ben
Palmer, a well-known character in State Street, who is one
of the main cog-wheels of Lawson's machine, first made
Lawson's acquaintance during this period of his career.

I do know the Waldron Brothers, of Providence, who are among the oldest residents of Rhode Island, and who, with the present United States Senator Nelson A. Aldrich, composed the great wholesale grocery house of Waldron, Wightman & Co. They did not graduate from a gambling-house on Broadway. I knew the brother referred to familiarly throughout Rhode Island as "Honest Bill," and a royal old fellow he was. I did business with him in those days, and to any connection I ever had with him I look back with pleasure. He was then conducting a farm in the suburbs of Providence, and in a straightforward, old-fashioned way supplying that city with produce and poultry, and had, to the best of my knowledge, the respect and confidence of all who knew him. I never knew of his having been a gambler, and had no means of knowing, as such matters were then an unknown world to me.

I never, up to reading it in Donohoe's story the other day, heard of 818 Broadway, curious as it may seem for a man of my experience. My knowledge of gambling has always been confined to that kind which comes under the head of stock gambling. I had not met my present friend, John J. Roche, of New York, at the time mentioned. I never heard of Herbert Gray, of Boston, until I employed him to manage my stable in 1899. I have known J. Benjamin Palmer all my life. We were boys together on State Street. Afterward he was the Stock-Exchange member of one of the oldest banking-houses in Boston. He is still a broker on State Street.

Nothing of certainty can be learned of his career during
this period. That he sold "base-ball" cards (a unique kind
of playing-cards) at the Providence railroad station is
stated on credible authority; that he "worked the trains"
between New York and Providence; that he sold books; that he
was a hanger-on at race-tracks, has been alleged. Any or all
of these rumors may be true--or false--for whatever may be
said of Lawson, his career has undoubtedly been one of
marvellous activity in many diversified lines.

I have never sold baseball playing-cards at the Providence station, nor anywhere, at this time nor any time, but I did invent the Lawson Baseball Playing-Cards, and was president of the Lawson Playing-Card Company. I never sold books at this time nor any time, and never "worked trains" at this time nor any time, although I fail to see any disgrace in such honest employment; nor had anything to do with trains in any way whatever at this time nor any time except to ride in them. I have never been a hanger-on at race-tracks, and have never had anything to do with a race-track of any kind other than visiting one for the first time in 1899 to see my own horse, Boralma, race, and four or five times since to see my own horses run. I desire to dwell on this especial accusation because these character thugs have caused it to be published throughout the country that I am and have always been a _habitue_ of race-tracks and a plunging bettor upon races. I regret that it is my misfortune never to have seen a horse-race until 1899, but if it can be shown that I was ever upon a race-track before that time, I will agree to stop writing this story of "Frenzied Finance."

In 1882, a concern known as the Briggs Printing Machine
Company was incorporated in Rhode Island ... to manufacture
a machine that was advertised to "print, cut, pack, and
fasten with twine 100,000 tags per hour." Thomas W. Lawson
secured the job of selling agent of this company, and he
proved so successful and the advertising matter which he
wrote brought such handsome returns, that we find him in
1884 promoted to the position of manager and enjoying a
salary of $150 per month. Later he became the secretary of
the company, and very shortly thereafter, in 1887, the
enterprise collapsed, was sold out by the sheriff, and
realized little or nothing for the numerous creditors....

It is true that I was the vice-president of the Briggs Printing Machine Company, which was organized and owned by others before I had aught to do with it. I was induced to invest considerable money in it and to take charge of its affairs. The Briggs Company was a close corporation. Its stock was never sold to the public, and after I left it it met with failure.

In December, 1888, the Lamson Consolidated Store-Service
Company was incorporated at Boston. Its purpose was to
exploit an invention of W. S. Lamson ... the overhead
trolley system used in department-stores for carrying cash
and parcels.... The capital stock at the beginning was
$250,000--par value of shares, $50. The company was doing
business and declaring two and a half per cent. dividends
quarterly, when Mr. Lawson stepped in and began to
manipulate the stock. The price of shares rose steadily to
122. Under the influence of speculative excitement the
directors increased the capital stock to $1,000,000, then to
$4,000,000. Mr. Lawson boomed the stock on the basis of a
report, totally destitute of truth, that an English
syndicate was about to purchase a controlling interest in
the company. Having unloaded all the shares at his disposal
on the uproad to 122, Mr. Lawson suddenly one morning awoke
to a realization of the fact that Lamson Store-Service
shares possessed absolutely no value, and he at once took
the public, as is his custom, into his confidence. In
circulars, by advertisements, and by cunningly contrived
"news" items he insistently dinned into the public ear that
Lamson shares were valueless. The result was as well might
be imagined. The stock declined to 30, whereupon Lawson
bought it back and then and there made his first grand
_coup_. It is said that first and last he realized $250,000
from the Lamson shareholders.

I did "Lawsonize" the Lamson Store-Service Company, just as I am at the present time "Lawsonizing" the "Standard-Oil"-Amalgamated-City-Bank crowd. The Lamson Store-Service Company, with $4,000,000 capital, was blunderbussing all who dared oppose it--all who refused to be bulldozed into consolidating with it. It was the most vicious exponent of the "Trust" methods I had ever met up to that time. Its arrogance, audacity, and crimes were the themes of the newspapers and courts of the day. A most casual investigation of the newspaper files, particularly in Osgood _vs._ Lamson, and The New York Store-Service Company _vs._ Lamson, will show a state of corporation assassination equal to that of the "Standard Oil," only on a smaller scale, of course. Perjury, bribery, and even murder will be found openly charged and in some cases proved. At the height of the sensational career of the Lamson Company it ran into one of my corporations, The Lawson Manufacturing Company, and started in to "do me up" or compel a consolidation, and--well, I gave it battle. The following circular to the stockholders will show how the battle started:

_Dear Sir_: I deem it my duty to say to you, as a
shareholder of the Lamson Store-Service Company, that your
Mr. Lamson and his agents have opened up on my company, and
with their usual criminal methods are endeavoring to ruin
us. This circular is to inform you that I have this day
given notice to each of your officers and directors that, in
three days from to-day, if they have not stopped their dirty
work and taken their hands off my company, they will take
the consequences. I do not pretend to be able to meet them
on the fighting grounds of the courts, for I know too well
their power of corruption and jury-buying, but I assure you
I have other ways by which I can stop them, etc., etc.

If Donohoe had desired to deal with facts, he could not have missed the details of this story, of which the papers at the time were full. It was a fight which would have warmed the heart-cockles of an embalmed warrior of the catacombs. Lamson stock was selling at 62, the highest price it ever attained, not 122, as this numskull states. When I began operations I slaughtered it and the reputation of Lamson and his associates; and in the midst of the fight, when the shares were down to 18, or perhaps 14, a great public meeting of stockholders--there were a whole lot of them--was called in the city of Lowell, and, amid fiery speeches, Lamson was told to choose between refuting my charges of fraud and being deposed from the presidency of the institution. Lamson attempted explanations, but the hard-headed stockholders did what the Amalgamated stockholders will some time do, passed resolutions that Lamson must punish me for libel or that they would punish him. The gathering then adjourned to a future date, at which Lamson was to report what action he had taken to punish me for my crimes. The next step was interesting, and bears on an accusation I have seen mentioned frequently of late. I had, when I began my fight, laid before Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York _World_, the dastardly crimes of which the company had been guilty, and was even then engaged in committing, and he had said: "Damnable! I will aid you in exposing them." And he did. Day after day there were broadsides in the _World_ relentlessly denouncing the rascalities of the Lamson outfit. These finally stirred them to action. One day I received word that some trickery was being put up in the district attorney's office in New York. A few days later there appeared at my office in Boston a police officer from New York and three of our head Boston police officers. They said to me: "We regret, Mr. Lawson, but we must take your secretary, Mr. William L. Vinal, back to New York, as he has been indicted for spreading false reports."

"Has any one else been indicted?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," they replied, "you and some of the _World_ people."

"Mr. Vinal has done nothing but obey my orders," I said. "Why don't you take me?"

"We have no orders to," was the reply.

I saw the game and sent word to the Governor of Massachusetts, who promptly told the combination: "Go slow, gentlemen. Remember you are not in New York now, but in Massachusetts." He ordered a public trial. Within two hours from the time they laid hands on my secretary I brought suit in his name for false arrest against the officers who were trying to arrest him, and grabbed the New York official before he could skip out of town. Then I went to see the Lamson crowd and we had it out. They begged that I allow Vinal to go to New York, just to vindicate them, in which circumstances he would be allowed to return on the next train, and the case would never be heard of again. If I would consent, they would agree to a reorganization of the company and the dropping out of Lamson. I showed them that they had gone too far, that I had damaging information as to how they had secured the indictment, and that now they must take the consequences.

I took the "midnight" for New York, and in the morning was at District-Attorney Fellows's office. I dared him to arrest me or the officers of the _World_. He replied: "I don't want you, Lawson. I cannot and won't help you advertise your fight." It proving impossible to get up any excitement in New York, I returned to Boston, and the extradition proceedings furnished a most sensational trial. The cause was bitterly fought. The lawyers even came to blows in the governor's chamber. Finally, when Governor Brackett had all the facts before him, he said: "You cannot work your dirty tricks on me," and he entered a vigorous refusal of the application for Mr. Vinal's extradition. This case established precedents for all such proceedings since.

The fight won, pressure was brought to bear on me to let up on the Lamson outfit and call off further proceedings. For some time I persistently refused to do so, as I was determined to contest the constitutionality of the law. Finally, however, on condition that Lamson should be thrown out, the management of the company reorganized, its criminal methods abandoned, and all records and trace of the indictment against myself and the others removed from the district attorney's books, I consented.

This is the history of how I "Lawsonized" the Lamson Store-Service Company, and if there is anything I have ever done that was good to do and well worth doing, this was it. I am just as proud of my work here as of what I did in the General Electric fight upon which I have already touched. In the Lamson reorganization I was offered all sorts of good things, but I refused, as I always have in such affairs, to benefit in any way but the open and fair one where I go into the open market and stake my money against that of my opponents on my ability to prove I am right. The facts here are of legal record. Following is the Donohoe-Rogers version. The mendacity is obvious:

Among the unfortunate Lamson-Service stockholders were
numbered several aggressive people of the old-fashioned
kind, who resented Mr. Lawson's peculiar way of doing
things. These submitted, in 1892, to the grand jury of the
city of New York a sheaf of Lawsonian literature, comprising
his scandalous attacks on the company's securities. The
grand jury indicted Thomas W. Lawson, and Colonel John R.
Fellows, the district attorney, and his assistants, Francis
L. Wellman and Mr. Lindsay, went to Boston to try to have
Lawson extradited. The Governor of Massachusetts came to
Lawson's rescue in the nick of time and declined to honor
the request of the Governor of New York for his extradition;
but for years thereafter the future author of "Frenzied
Finance" made his trips to this money-centre incognito.

THE GRAND RIVERS ENTERPRISE

In 1890 the entire country rang with the fame of Grand
Rivers, and it was Thomas W. Lawson, of Boston, who pulled
the bell-rope.... The scheme, as may be deduced herefrom,
was a most comprehensive one. The development of the
"marvellous deposit of coal and iron," which had been
discovered upon the property by Mr. Lawson, one day while
seated in his revolving chair in his State Street office,
furnished the basis for the incorporation of the Furnaces
Company. After $2,000,000 had been "expended," the clamor of
the stockholders caused the company actually to build
several furnaces. They were erected and stood idle, with
nothing to feed them. The whole scheme collapsed in 1892.
The stockholders lost every dollar of their investment....

In this, his fourth financial venture, Mr. Lawson did but
repeat his former experiences--except, in this case, the
loss sustained by those who reposed confidence in his
promises was heavier than in any of his prior undertakings.

The Kentucky experience is one of the pleasantest memories of my life. Measured by dollars and cents it was expensive but was well worth it, as the young man remarked who broke his arm by being thrown from his horse into the lap of his future wife. It makes a long story, and I shall only touch on the leading facts concerning it by way of showing the desperate straits my enemies are put to in their efforts to discredit my career.

My present brokers, Messrs. Brown, Riley & Co., one of the oldest and largest Boston and New York Stock Exchange houses, had floated the Grand Rivers enterprise for some of their wealthy clients. It was an iron, coal, and furnace proposition, and before I ever heard of it, it had been bought and paid for, and enormous furnaces were under way. It was a close corporation. After a very large amount of money--in the millions--had gone into the property, I was induced to take the executive management, and also I put in a very large amount of my own money. My work was to be that of business director, for I did not know an iron or a coal mine from an alabaster ledge in the lunar spheres, and not half as much about an iron smelter as I did about converting whiskers into mermaid's tresses. However, one of the greatest iron men in New England, Aretas Blood, president of the Manchester Locomotive Works, and of the Nashua Steel and Iron Company, was at the head of the enterprise, which apparently safeguarded it. Well, it turned out that there was no iron in the mines--at least not enough to pay for extraction, and the investment simply disappeared. I lost a very large amount--at least, a very large amount for me--but I had to show for it the love and friendship and respect of the inhabitants of one of the fairest places on the earth--a place where brave men and lovely women live in peace and comfort in the knowledge of their own fearless, simple honesty, and their hatred of shams and trickery--in absolute ignorance of frenzied financiers and the "System's" votaries.

The history of Grand Rivers is an open book. There is no secret about my connection with the enterprise. It was a straight and proper venture. The men who are my brokers of to-day fathered it, and they are men of honor, probity, and responsibility, who since my first year in business in 1870 have been my close business associates and personal friends. Why do not Donohoe and his breed of gutter-rooters, when seeking information about me, ask such men as these for facts about my life?--they know what every hour of it has been. Strange as it may seem to such vampires, the men I began to do business with when I was a boy I am doing business with to-day, and they are my associates and friends.

I postponed until the last moment writing this article in order that I might be able to diagnose the "System's" attack on me. The first of the widely advertised series was such a foolish and asinine thing as to be unworthy of notice, and I desired to see how much further the second would go. In the former it was charged that I was writing my articles solely for the purpose of securing stock-market profits and compelling the "System" to settle; in other words, that I was attempting to blackmail them; that I had no honorable motives in writing my story, and had no remedy of any kind in mind; that in the recent panic I had made a million and a quarter of dollars; that I had secured President Roosevelt's message eight days before it was published; that I had advertised on November 29th, unqualifiedly advising all to purchase Amalgamated, and that on December 6th I had advertised advising all to sell. It is true that I did advise the public to sell, but that in my advertisement of November 29th I advised the people to buy Amalgamated I positively deny. I carefully avoided doing so. The other statements are equally false, and were made with a full knowledge of their falsity.

The incidents in my career about which I have here set forth the facts are not secret. All the things I have stated are fully susceptible of proof. For another instant let me take the assertion that my motive in this crusade is personal gain through stock-jobbery, and that I have no aim or end in view other than that. Well, I can to-day show the Remedy to which I have alluded so often, and which when I worked it out in 1893 I had printed with full detail. It is in my vault now under lock and key. In the year 1894, in London, I laid a copy of this document before Joseph Pulitzer of the New York _World_. Remember, this was a year before I met H. H. Rogers or any of the "Standard Oil" party.

Since Donohoe began his latest series of attacks I have had scores of letters commenting on them. A significant verdict on what the man is accomplishing is the following:

BUFFALO, N. Y., January 23, 1905.

_Dear Sir_: I herewith enclose you copy of a letter just
sent to Mr. Donohoe, also to the editor of ----

Yours respectfully,
----

(COPY)

January 23, 1905.

MR. DENIS DONOHOE,

Financial Editor, New York _Commercial_, New York City.

_Dear Sir_: With considerable pleasure, satisfaction, and
conviction, I have carefully read all the articles on
"Frenzied Finance," by Mr. Lawson, and from my limited
knowledge of affairs, gained by fifteen years of active
life, am of the opinion that he has been telling facts,
although at times they are clothed in the language of a
writer of fiction.

I have been waiting and confidently expecting, during the
past six months, that some able, honest, unbiassed, and
free-handed man would take up the discussion against Mr.
Lawson, and in this way aid the people in viewing the entire
subject with all possible side-lights, so that when public
opinion shall be finally formed, as surely it will be in the
future, it may be as nearly right as possible and only the
guilty suffer. It was, therefore, with a high degree of
exultation that I purchased ---- of January 19th, upon the
first page of which in bold type appears: "Lawson
Answered--the Truth About Frenzied Finance." At the sight of
these words I said in almost audible tones: "Now we shall
hear the other side, or at least learn what Mr. Lawson has
omitted, if anything."

I have just finished reading your article in said issue of
----, and as you now pose as a public writer and benefactor,
you of course will welcome frank, honest criticism. After
reading and rereading your said article, I am, against my
desire, forced to the following conclusions:

1. You are either one of the "System" or are hired by it.

2. This article of yours was prepared for the purposes of
making two points: (a) Working on the sentiment and passions
of the weak, and the women; and (b) diverting public
attention and opinion from the real facts at issue, by
attacking Mr. Lawson's personal character, which is not up
for discussion.

3. Your article is full of high-sounding declarations, and
void of either logic or common sense.

4. In your endeavor to express the wishes of the prejudiced
and biassed, you are undoubtedly dishonest with yourself
without deceiving the public.

5. Your article lacks the ring that carries conviction,
either as to your sincerity or the truthfulness of the
statements you make.

6. The article indicates that you are vainly trying to ape
Mr. Lawson's style.

Yours respectfully,
E. G. MANSFIELD,
Attorney-at-law.

Following the Donohoe outburst there came innumerable letters, of which this is a good sample:

TACOMA, WASH., February 14, 1905.

_Dear Sir_: It would be greatly appreciated by at least one
of your readers if you would furnish the great and only
Donohoe the details of some really scandalous epoch of your
past. It has been stated many times that one man cannot make
a million dollars and do it honestly, so we must assume you
have done some "things" in your past. We have a very high
regard out West for the works of Mr. Dooley and Mark Twain,
and also are regular subscribers of _Puck_ and _Judge_, and
we don't want to see these noted writers and periodicals
unseated, even for the time being, by Mr. Donohoe.

Therefore we ask you to give him some tip from which he can
work out something serious, so he can make a statement that
is not "reported," or the deduction of which does not
require Sherlock Holmes.

His work of "dissecting" so far reminds us of the work of a
six months' student of a medical college on a Tom cat (no
pun meant).

Yours very truly,
L. H. M.

I answered as follows:

_My Dear Sir_: Your request is similar to that of a hundred other correspondents. I regret I can do nothing to help out. Donohoe's trouble is, he is short of facts, so "short" that he seems to me completely "cornered." I am "long of" them, as you and all my other readers will admit before I am through my story, but my facts are not the kind Donohoe can use, or I would willingly let him have a few to assist him out of his present predicament.

Donohoe's employers, Rogers and the "Standard Oil," knew before they put him on to his present "job" that my life was a peculiarly and unusually open one--one that had absolutely no dark or covered corner in it; they knew it not only because all men in my walks of life know it, but because they had investigated it with their unerring search-light. Most men who have ever been on the inside of "Standard Oil" know that no man with a bad record could do business, much less have an intimate relation, with Rogers and Rockefeller for nine seconds; and my connection extended over nine years.

The tone of my correspondence during the year was not by any means altogether friendly. The writer of the following letter presented his conclusions straight from the shoulder and I was equally direct in my reply:

Personal.

GAINESVILLE, FLA., February 21, 1905.

MR. THOMAS W. LAWSON, Boston, Mass.

_Dear Sir_: Pardon my "buttin' in"--seems I must say
something.

If what Donohoe says about your Trinity Copper Company is
true, it would seem you ought to stop throwing mud at the
Standard Oil crowd, for you are no better than are they, and
they are known thieves and robbers. While you may be telling
the truth about the other fellow, yet the fact of your
telling it does not set well on the stomach of those who
read both sides of the story. Seems to me it's "dog eat dog"
until every one is disgusted.

Why don't you come down to business and give the readers of
_Everybody's_ something wholesome to digest and plenty of
it? The way it comes now, we are over our hunger before the
next issue shows up, and, in the meantime, your friend has
converted many to the thought that you are worse than the
Standard Oil crowd.

Won't you please answer, in the next issue of _Everybody's_,
if you made your money--your fortune, HONESTLY, or did you
"do others" for fear they would "do you"? I am inclined to
think you are as big a "grafter" as ever came down the pike,
even though you may be telling on the other fellow--turning
State's evidence.

Yours truly,
----

You ask why I do not get down to business. You won't mind my telling you the principal reason is that it is _I_ who am writing "Frenzied Finance," not you nor any of your kind, and that I propose to decide when it is time to get down to business. If in the meantime there is any one else who can do the job I have cut out better than I, why, none will be better pleased than myself. Indeed, I will gladly contribute as a reward to my successor double the many thousands of dollars I am paying each month to get this work of mine properly before the people.

What Donohoe says of my Trinity Copper is not only absolutely false, but has over and over again been demonstrated to be so. The actual facts regarding that property have been printed time and again in reputable Boston newspapers, and casual inquiry will obtain you the full details. In addition, practically everything which Donohoe, the hired mouthpiece of "Standard Oil" and the "System," has said is absolutely untrue and made from whole cloth. When I say this I cover all criticism which has been made upon me or my work by "Standard Oil" or the "System," for this character thug has utilized every dirty slander which my enemies ever invented and put into circulation.

Did I make my fortune honestly, you ask? and I answer: In thirty-six years of active business life, very active, embracing transactions through which I have passed from poverty to wealth and back again from riches to poverty, and in which I might easily have retained the riches by sacrificing a principle, I have never once in all these years and in all these transactions done a wrong to man, woman, or child, nor taken from man, woman, or child a dollar unfairly, much less dishonestly. Rather a remarkable record, you will say, for one who has made millions in the stock business. But I should not be broadly honest if I did not add the modification that these millions of dollars were made in the open stock-market, by methods which in the open stock-market are called fair and honest; that is, I have played the game according to the rules, and the "other fellow" has had equal chance with me and might have done anything I ever did. If, however, business were conducted as it should be and as it will be after my "Remedy" has reformed present conditions, such methods will net those using them only thousands where I have gained millions.

You add that you are inclined to think I am a "grafter." In reply I can only say you would not dare--and I don't know your size, color, or length of trigger-finger--to say it in my presence, though of course, it is absolutely immaterial what you or your kind think of me or my work.

THE LAWSON PANIC

During the eighteen months in which "Frenzied Finance" has been before the public, history has been made at a stiff pace. Next to the insurance revelations which are still in process of deliverance, the most striking demonstration of the period has been the flurry in stocks which was spoken of as the Lawson panic. In the February, 1905, issue of _Everybody's Magazine_ I dealt with the performance and its attendant phenomena.

Without undue vaunting, I may say that my explanation of the mysteries of modern finance has not been without immediate profit to the public. The people, accustomed to invest their money in the legitimate securities of the country, had time and again lost hundreds of millions without dreaming that they had been as ruthlessly robbed as though held up at a pistol-point by a highwayman. They imagined that the great capitalists whose names were emblazoned in the press throughout the land, and who managed the banks and trust companies and insurance corporations to which their savings were intrusted, were noble and public-spirited gentlemen of the highest moral principles and of absolute integrity. They know to-day that many of them are reckless and greedy stock gamblers, incessantly dickering with the machinery of finance for their own private enrichment.

I have stripped the veil from these hypocrites and exposed to all the world their soulless rapacity. I have let the light of heaven into the dim recesses of Wall Street in which these buccaneers of commerce concocted their plots. I have done more than this: I have nipped in the bud the newest conspiracy for the entanglement of the public--the great "bull" market which was organized late in 1904 by the chief votaries of the "System," to harvest a new crop of profits on the securities they had laid in during their last raid. In other words, I have treated Wall Street to a dose of its own medicine.

During the month of December the newspapers devoted considerable space to the doings of the stock-market in connection with the episode to which I refer. I use the word "episode" purposely, for I warn my readers that it was but one of a series of disturbances which must occur before the grasp of the pirates on the great financial interests of this country can be shaken off. David slew Goliath with one pebble from his sling, but the giant "System," intrenched in the stoutest citadel ever constructed, and armored in gold and riven steel, will yield to no mere call for surrender. My own part I have cheerfully taken with no delusions as to the difficulties of the contest. He who interferes between the lamb and the wolf is likely to provoke the wrath of the wolf, and I have done worse, for have I not come between the lions of finance and their willing prey?